User blog:LeMansRacer/Where is World heading?
It's been a week since my last Blog post but I think this could become a regular thing. I might create a new post each week with regards to an aspect in the Need for Speed series. Seeing as though it's July and we've not heard much from Criterion, I thought I'd delve into Need for Speed: World. Mostly because I said I had my own problems with World in my last blog post. 'The Beta' The Beta for Need for Speed: World began on the weekend of March 6th, 2010. I downloaded it as soon as the client became available but, of course Black Box being based in Vancouver, meant staying up till 2am for the entire game to download. The Beta was awesome - it had the right cars, the right location and the right mechanics. It was a simple Beta with a few cars such as the Mazda Mazdaspeed3, Dodge Charger R/T and the Mitsubishi Eclipse GT. These, in some sense, we're the same opening cars seen in Need for Speed: Carbon as each had an improvement over the other in either Top Speed, Acceleration or Handling. It seemed as though everything was going to be well as more Beta weekends took place. Looking at the first Beta, only a few Sprint or Circuit events were available but anyone who plays an early Beta will tell you that a game will be light on content. '...The Beta Continued' The Beta weekends continued. More cars were added, more locations were made open and more players poured in. The game was looking more and more capable of being called a Racing MMO even though no new game modes were made available beyond Sprint or Circuit. The release date was eventually set and World was pronounced as a "Free-to-Play" title up to Driver Level 10. One problem came across my mind - nothing new has happened, nothing innovative has occurred, nothing ground-breaking had broken the ground and nothing to set this game apart had pushed it there. It had become nothing more then an experiment by Black Box and EA. An experiment to see how they can recapture fans of the Need for Speed series after Need for Speed: Undercover was released. 'July 27th, 2010' Need for Speed: World was released on July 27th, 2010. The weeks leading up to the release were a wash of "pre-order bonuses here," "early content unlocks there" and "VIP treatment all-over." Those weeks for me were filled with sleepless nights and computer screen dried eyes... as it was the last couple of weeks before I had to hand-in all of my A-Level work for College and choose a University. My hand-ins went well and I was free for a summer. A summer of video games... because I know what I like and I hate the general public. Anyway, I decided to download Need for Speed: World on its release day - I was thinking about how quickly I'd reach Level 10 and buy the game, how I'd be playing it all night long - every night - for the rest of my summer and how I could be proud to say I play the first true Need for Speed MMO. Sadly, I only made it to Level 3. I hated that it was still only Sprints and Circuits. I hated that a Need for Speed game involving police chases had no multiplayer police related content. I hated it even more after remembering Cops and Robbers featured in Undercover but then I truly hated the game when I remembered the fun of Pursuit Knockout and Pursuit Tag in Carbon. 'Rage Quit' Level 3... Level 3... Level 3 was my Driver Level in Need for Speed: World for over seven months. I started playing again in February after finding out about a Free Rental for the Cop Audi R8. I still wasn't happy. Around this time I was enjoying Criterion's Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010) by far more than World. Hot Pursuit even received a massive content update before February even though it came out four months after World. By February 2011, World had moved from total performance package upgrades for each car, and had moved to the classic aspect performance upgrades. This was obviously a step forwards in some regards but this also meant a new degree of game balancing was needed. This update is also commonly referred to by the community as "Version 5." As in "The game has gone downhill since version 5" or "Version 5 was awful, they need to go back" because people never seem to praise Black Box when they do something to improve a game. (Infact - Most MMO forums involve more complain then praise. Realistically, the more moaning, the more of an improvement that aspect is to the game - unless its a bug.) 'Team Escape' Team Escape is, by far in a way, what I was expecting from Black Box with their release of World. It was something MMO players call a PvE game mode (Player vs Environment) or for those don't have prior experience with MMO games - its the racing equivalent of a Dungeon... except your trying to get out instead of in. The only problem is that a dungeon is usually extremely difficult in relation to a player's level. Team Escape is based on the vehicle tiers with 1, 2 and 3 relating to different courses. This makes the courses very, very easy to remember as there are very little iterations or occurrences each time someone players it. This was fun and I slowly got back into playing the game. I quickly discovered that the other regions of Rockport and Palmont City were added as well as a extra few cars. 'Casual Gaming' I treated World as a casual game. I played once every couple of days but that was usually one or two Team Escapes. My Driver Level began to climb up the ladder. Summer 2011 had rolled around by this time and I had finished my first year at University. I had a large sum of money (in my opinion) left over from my student loan. I felt really happy with my results and I thought it was a great time to meet one of my childhood goals - built a gaming PC... Yeah, a childhood goal - like this long blog post make me not look like a nerd? PC built, PC working, PC powerful and most of all, it was in need of some games. I had a lot of Steam games and a lot of boxxed games - they were either too big to download the same day or in storage. I started playing World again - except as a hardcore player. That lasted about 3 days and I went back to being a filthy casual in World - Treasure Hunt didn't help the situation, in fact it became the only game mode I played. 'The Big Gap' This sort of thing continued until February 2012 - The Great SpeedBoost Sale of 2012! I was magical, £7 for 50,000 SpeedBoost - I spent £38, which I found weird as I had to keep justifying it to myself as a full PC game purchase. Now I've started playing the game a lot. A few Team Escapes, a few Races and a few... a few... ... yep. Still shy on content. 'Content' World had a great start on the content, but also a bad start. They had a nice, new, crisp recreation of Rockport and Palmont City, at the price of only two game modes. Black Box added Treasure Hunt, Team Escape and then 2 additional Escapes. The only problem was that this was over the course of a two year period. There are over 120 different cars in the game, but the balancing of them seems a little off. World has become what I like to call - "Need for Speed: The Greatest Hits Compilation''." The game has become a dumping ground for content from Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Need for Speed: Carbon, Need for Speed: Undercover, Shift 2: Unleashed, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010) and Need for Speed: The Run. Yes, The Run. That's why the Shelby Daytona Coupe only has one bodykit. Because it was the only bodykit option in The Run. '''Future I do think that World could become a lot better over the next few months. Yes, they threw around Canyons as a buzz word to make them look busy; Yes, they've mostly only added cars; Yes, they've altered their designs (See Next Blog Post); and Yes! For crying out loud, I agree with you all - SpeedBoost, is, TOO, EXPENSIVE! But, and this is a big but... I can not lie, I see this iddy-bitty -- Black Box has the chance to make their only Need for Speed game become the best Need for Speed game. I mean, looking at Black Box - they've developed the series for around 10 years and EA pulls the rug from under them in favour of Criterion Games. If I was Marc DeVellis, If I was a designer at Black Box, If I was a modeller at Black Box, hell - If I was an intern at Black Box, I'd have something inside me snap and make prove to the world that the series I put 10 years of work into could still be done right by us. 'TL;DR' That was a long blog post. The tl;dr summary is this - Black Box had a great idea, it looked promising but at some point the ball was dropped. It has been picked up again a few times but has never started to roll again. Hopefully, in the next couple of months Black Box will focus World's design and give it the content it deserves to become the redemption of a great studio's once beloved name, instead of being the final joke in its decline. Category:Blog posts